Just Released: DriveWorks 16 In DriveWorks 16 we’ve built on our extensive Design Automation capabilities, greatly enhanced our 3D capabilities and made sure DriveWorks is positioned as a powerful configurator and CPQ solution company-wide for manufacturing companies. This release focuses on enhancements to stability and performance, scalability and usability alongside new features. Many of the enhancements in DriveWorks 16 have come from customer suggestions. Thank you to everyone that has submitted requests & suggestions to suggest@driveworks.co.uk. Here’s just a few of the enhancements/new features in DriveWorks 16: Performance Enhancements Timers Insert position and mate in a SOLIDWORKS assembly Dynamic 3D Preview including Layout New Specification Tasks, Functions & Generation Tasks The DriveWorks […]

When working on a new or existing DriveWorks project, SOLIDWORKS practices need to be considered as well. Unfortunately not everything can be fully determined prior to setting everything up, so changes are bound to happen, such as renaming SOLIDWORKS parts, assemblies or drawings. Below is an outline that will allow you to rename your parts and assemblies without losing any information that was created or captured. Before we begin, make sure that SOLIDWORKS has the ability to rename parts from within the feature tree by enabling Tools > Options > System Options > FeatureManager > Allow component files to be renamed from FeatureManager tree. A full link to the instructions for renaming SOLIDWORKS files can be found here. http://help.solidworks.com/2017/english/solidworks/sldworks/HIDD_RENAME_COMP.htm […]

As of November 11th, 2017, DriveWorks 15 sp2 is now officially available from the DriveWorks website! This release comes with many new updates and enhancements such as; Child Specification filters! The ability to use the Exact Number function in your rules! DriveWorks Live performance enhancements! DriveWorks Live security enhancements! and many more! Customers with a current subscription can download the software and view all of the release notes at https://hub.driveworks.co.uk/software/driveworks-pro/ or https://hub.driveworks.co.uk/software/driveworks-solo/. For information about the installation and upgrade process check out the help documents at http://docs.driveworkspro.com/Topic/Installation and http://help.driveworkssolo.com/Topic/Installation. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below or contact your local value added reseller for assistance! Derek […]

Last year the InFlow team announced the development of the PDM Productivity Pack. This set of tools has been developed to enhance the capabilities of PDM Professional administrators, in any organization. The PDM Productivity Pack contains a set of utilities that have been developed by our team of PDM experts. The PDM Productivity Pack includes the following utilities; Advanced Notification, File Move Tool, BOM Export, Set Revision Add-in, Property Updater, and Folder Permission Manager. In this post, we will take a quick look at the powerful “Folder Permission Manager”. Have you ever tried setting folder permissions on a large set of PDM folders? Or my favorite; setting up an entire […]

SOLIDWORKS PDM Administrators…are you looking for more training? Since the SOLIDWORKS PDM product was introduced 10+ years ago, InFlow team members have trained hundreds of administrators. Recently, some of our administrators have asked for more. They are looking for classes to get a bit more out of the system, especially covering advanced topics or topics not covered in any training class. Earlier this year, we released 2 new classes and conducted those new classes for the first time in October. The first class launched was the SOLIDWORKS PDM Advanced Administrator class covering the following items in a 2 day class: Advanced Data Card Techniques Advanced Search Card Techniques Advanced Workflow […]

If you moved your SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional or SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard database or archive server components to a new server, your existing clients will not be able to connect, as the server connections are hard-coded into the registry. The best way to point to the new server is to remove the vault view and re-add it. However, you can also edit the registry to make this change. You will need to change the keys for the database server and the archive server if you have moved both the SQL database and the archive server to new hardware or renamed existing hardware. On each client, update the SOLIDWORKS PDM registry keys […]

PDM Overwrite Latest Version Option In the 2017 release of SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional and Standard, a new feature was added to allow users to replace previous versions of documents in the vault. When a user checks in a file, they can choose the “Overwrite Latest Version” option when checking in the file. The benefits: Cut down on all the versions that get stored in the archive as users are checking in their files each day. Give a power user the ability to fix a “non-critical” issue on a document without pushing the file through a state change or revision change. Allow users to change “common parts” in your vault without […]

SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional 2017 introduces a number of new enhancements in the tasks for converting various file types. The first being a new output format for SOLIDWORKS files. For SOLIDWORKS MBD users, the Convert task in PDM Professional can be set up to automatically generate SOLIDWORKS MBD 3D PDFs. To set this up, in the properties of the Convert task select the ‘Conversion Settings.’ Then set the Output file format to ‘3D PDF – MBD.’ Once set, you can then select the themes to use for Parts and Assemblies (if the theme is in your PDM Professional vault, it must be cached before task execution) and which views to publish. […]